Customer Reviews

The White Serpent (Daw science fiction)

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I had high hopes for this book before I read it, because I knew it was a sequel to Storm Lord and Anackire, two stand-alone fantasy novels that made me a Tanith Lee fan forever. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as good and I got the impression Lee wasn't sure herself where she was going with this one. All the previous characters are long dead. The new main character is a descendant of the Storm Lord's wicked half-brother, who goes through various traumas and disasters including his fatal fixation on a pale enigmatic woman who is apparently the white serpent of the title. The plot events seem disconnected from each other somehow and in the end the hero meets a depressing and puzzling fate. The viewpoint skips disconcertingly from character to character, but not in a way that enhances suspense, and the emotional and mythic intensity of Anackire is lacking. At no point did I really understand why any of the characters were doing what they did. Unlike some of Lee's stranger works, such as Book of the Damned, where the writing is clearly intended to be surreal as a vivid dream, White Serpent just comes off as vague and unfocused. Unless you're such a hardcore Tanith Lee fan that you want to own everything she's written for the sake of completeness, don't bother tracking this one down; it's not worth it.

I would have to agree with the previous reviewer that this book is not one of Tanith Lee's better efforts. Although the author touches on a number of good ideas, it is certainly not up to par with the vivid, sweeping, imaginative epics that are "The Storm Lord" and "Anackire." However, I am glad that I tracked down a copy, if merely only for the sake of completion. But what's most disappointing to me is that the story of Rehger of Ly Dis, gladiatorial descendant of Amrek the genocidal tyrant of "The Storm Lord," is not without interest (in fact I always liked Amrek myself); it just doesn't really feel fully developed. The whole story feels more like a half-finished outline than a fully actualized novel. Even Rehger's romance with the psychic albino sorceress Aztira is shortchanged, and Rehger himself just seems to float hither and yon- either in his quest to find a job or in his quest to locate his creepy girlfriend- as indifferent as a ghost to much of the mechanisms of the plot. As usual, there's loads of symbolism, which is typical for a Lee book, but the difference is that in "Serpent" the symbolism seems to substitute for characterization.

Anyway, it's worth a read if you're a Tanith Lee completist, but those who are new to her should try "The Birthgrave" or "The Storm Lord" before this one.